Eliot Kamenitz/The Times-PicayuneThe stalled ownership transfer from George Shinn (foreground) to Gary Chouest (background) has left the Hornets' situation a question mark.You’ve scratched through George Shinn’s name as owner and written in “Gary Chouest, ” then erased Chouest’s name, rewrote it and attached an ellipsis because the team isn’t yet his and might not be for a while.

The blank space beside “Head Coach” had about eight names next to it. Six were crossed off because two were named front-runners, and then one of the front-runners (Monty Williams) had a line drawn through his name because sources said the other guy (Tom Thibodeau) would be offered a contract.

Except Hornets General Manager Jeff Bower said that’s not true, that the Hornets haven’t made an offer and won’t address the matter until an agreement has been reached. So you drew squiggly lines through the other seven names and wrote them again in a clean space, because you’re not at all certain they’re out of the running.

You looked at the section that allows you to speculate on the draft, and after penciling in four or five names, figured it didn’t make a lot of sense to continue because the Hornets have no coach, which means they have no coaching philosophy. Which means no one knows what kind of player best will fit what he wants to do.

True, New Orleans doesn’t need an owner or a coach in order to make a pick.

But you’d like to believe the new guy would have significant input on the pick, since he’ll be charged with guiding and developing the player, who’ll have to fit into the coach’s system.

So you stuck a bunch of question marks around those names.

And let’s not even get into addressing the current players on the roster.

You’d love to erase some of those names and ink in replacements, but with no coach, an unsettled ownership situation and an unclear philosophy of what the Hornets will or won’t be willing to spend, or how aggressive they might or might not be this summer in terms of pursuing players, it’s best just to not bother with that item right now.

Other than that, all is well.

Seriously, it’s impossible to tell what is or isn’t real with the Hornets these days, which source can or can’t be trusted, who’s promoting the agenda for whom. No report seems as concrete as it did before it was refuted, but we also know that rumors don’t start themselves, and that huge, significant ones — such as the one nonchalantly floated that Shinn was looking to sell — have turned out to be gospel.

To simply dismiss them after they’ve been refuted isn’t the smart way to go.

So it seems the Hornets are all over the place. And it’s not just in New Orleans where that impression is prevalent, not just here where it appears the team is setting and trying to stamp out fires while people wonder who’s giving the orders and exactly what is the goal.

League-wide, the franchise is being watched to see how it handles business and if there are any significant changes in how the team operates.

With legitimate reason.

Question: If the money-will-be-no-object, no-stone-will-go-unturned search for a head coach yielded Williams — that conclusion based on the premise that Thibodeau will coach Boston, Chicago or New Jersey — would it look much like money wasn’t an object and every rock was kicked?

Would perception be that the Hornets nabbed a great, young mind?

Or would reality be that in Williams, who wasn’t Portland’s lead assistant and didn’t handle the head coaching duties when Nate McMillan sat out two games last season due to surgery to repair a ruptured right Achilles, the Hornets found a man who’d be so happy to have his first head coaching job, he’d work for pennies and wouldn’t care from whom he took his orders or how much personnel input he had?

It’s tough to say.

It’s tough to derive anything concrete from a scorecard that’s so scratched through and written over, all it can be labeled is a hot mess.